The following table gives a complete guide to all the known typographical errors in The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Those identified with "+" in the leftmost column were corrected in the second printing of December 2002. Most of the errors are (or were) very small: one-character spelling mistakes, spacing errors, character transpositions, and the like; only one or two are substantive (and one of those, on page 518, involves not grammar but geography). The substantive errors that relate to the English language are small, like citing moth as having only an [s] plural when in fact the [z] plural is quite common (page 1587). The most serious errors, where a statement suggests a wrong analysis, are very rare. Perhaps the two most serious we know about are these:

• On page 560, in [21], the use of laureate as a postpositive adjective is illustrated with Nobel laureate, but in that phrase the noun laureate is the head and Nobel is an attributive modifier. We should have put poet laureate, where the head noun is poet and laureate does function as a postpositive adjective. (Notice that the plural of Nobel laureate is Nobel laureates. The plural of poet laureate (rare, because any given country selects a unique poet for that title) would be poets laureate under the analysis we are talking about, though many people now treat the phrase as if it had the same structure as Nobel laureate, and write poet laureates. This shows fairly clearly that laureate as an adjective is being lost from the language, even in postpositive function with the head noun poet.)

• On page 912, the term "Determinative whose" is incorrectly used, twice: whose is the genitive inflected form of the pronoun who, so although it functions as determiner, it belongs to the pronoun category, not the determinative category.

The second table shows a couple of entries that we now think should have been in the lexical index but were missed in the first printing (two were added in the second), and a few further entries that we now think should have been added.

Some of the errors have been spotted by the authors, and others by alert readers around the world (literally: we have heard from readers in the UK, Germany, Nigeria, China, Papua New Guinea, Australia, Canada, and the USA). We particularly thank Professor Adam Albright, Mr Randy Alexander, Brother Maurice McCallum, Professor Peter Culicover, Mr Michael J. Corrigan, Dr Vanja Dunjko, Dr Joybrato Mukherjee, Dr Benson Ibe, Mr Brett Reynolds, Professor Geoffrey Leech, and Professor Roland Sussex.

It appears that there were 62 errors in the first printing, and only 47 in the second printing — that's about one for each 41 pages.

The authors would be grateful for messages about any further errors that might be discovered. They should be emailed to g p u l l u m @ling.ed.ac.uk, preferably with a copy to r h u d d l e s t o n @aapt.net.au. (Apologies to those who have mailed us at the addresses previously announced on this page. Neither is now in use any more; we have both moved homes and offices since CGEL appeared. Please send your message again if you mailed us and received no acknowledgment.)

Errors
(prefixed + means "has been fixed in the second printing"; "\\" signifies a line break)

	Page	Where	Erroneous text	Corrected text
+	viii	line 7	Üniversität	Universität
+	xii	line 14	(p. 48)	(p. 49)
+	xiii	line 11 up	[24] what you insisted that we need 1098	[24] what you insisted that we need 1089
	11	fn. 3	the London/Oslo/Bergen (LOB) corpus	the Lancaster/Oslo/Bergen (LOB) corpus
	24	5 lines up	the  photographs	the  photographs
	47	3 lines below [3]	the passive [iiib]	the passive [iiia]
+	79	line 8	in Ch. 16, §10.3	in Ch. 16, §10.1.3
	140	6 lines below [3]	T12	Tr2
	176	2 lines above [5]	it important	it is important
	217	11 lines up (text)	think in a passive clause	consider in a passive clause
	218	4 lines below [6]	think	consider
	219	line 2	die	leave
+	241	example [11], line (f)	/   X   /   X	N/A   N/A   N/A   X
	247	4 lines below [4]	her	Jo
	261	example [26]	almost raw	almost raw
	349	example display at line 12	[51]	[53]
	412	example [7b]	Nom:	Nom
	446	example [13ii]	fifty miles an hours	fifty miles an hour
	446	line 10	indefinities	indefinites
	479	below example [63]	the suffix's attaches	the suffix  's  attaches
	518	line 9	the Bronx naming a district in Manhattan	the Bronx naming a borough of New York City
	529	6 lines below [3]	An adjectives that	All adjectives that
	530	12 lines up	Predicative adjuncts in front position . . .	█ Predicative adjuncts in front position . . .
	547	[33ii]	It surely isn't [That important]	It surely isn't [that important]
	560	in [20], second line	drunk	drunk BrE
	560	line 3 up (not counting footnote)	a Nobel laureate	the poet laureate
	560	line below [20]	Those in [20] have to do with medical health or condition.	Those in [i] have to do with medical health or condition.
	561	line 9	We take these to involved	We take these to involve
+	599	line 8	Adj Ps	AdjPs
	620	tree (c) in [9]	NP (at the right child of the root PP node, under Comp:)	PP
	626	bottom line of text	In [i] the	In [a] the
	627	line 2	in [ii]	in [b]
	912	line 10 up, header (a)	Determinative whose	Determiner whose
	912	line 5 up	With determinative whose,	With determiner whose,
+	629	example [7iia]	you can certainly rely __ oni	you can certainly rely on __i
	1036	2 lines below [8]	gerund–participials	gerund-participials
	1037	below example [1]	The meaning in both [i] and [ii]	The meaning in both [ii] and [iii]
	1043	example [20], ii	. . . . I felt the need need of a better knowledge	. . . . I felt the need of a better knowledge
	1173	[2] iii	subordinate	embedded in a larger clause
	1229	[14]	help (B) NS	help (B) NS
	1276	[5] i	[on Monday,	on [Monday,
	1276	[5] ii	[on Monday	on [Monday
	1280	[14] i b.	[on Tuesday or	[on [Tuesday or
	1284	[28] i	[the premiers of Queensland and Tasmania]	[the premiers of Queensland and Tasmania]
	1587	line 4 up	length, moth, strength	length, strength
	1587	line 5 up	lath, oath, sheath,	lath, moth, oath, sheath,
	1605	[44]	thrive	thrive R
+	1623	line 23	consraints	constraints
+	1725	line 23	(' or ' ')	(' or ")
+	1755	example [11ii]	'She	She
+	1796	column 3	let 208, 271n,	let 208, 270n,
+	1809	line 3, col. 2	tortelleni 1594	tortellini 1594
	1817	line 3	co-indexing 49, 68, 1037, 1039, 1085, 1088	co-indexing 49, 68, 1037, 1039, 1085, 1088, 1454
	1823	‘fused-head’ entry	384,	384-5,
+	1837	line 21, col. 1	1582n	1581n

Additions to lexical index (those prefixed "+" have been added in the second printing)

	Page	Where	What it says (or said)	What it should say
	1784	line 6 of column 3	buy 230, 232, 235, 248, 260, 285,	buy 220, 230, 232, 235, 248, 260, 285,
	1786	nearly halfway down column 2	contain 167-8, 1432	contain 167-8, 220, 1432
+	1788	line 10, col. 2	dive 296	dive 296, 1604
	1795	line 11 of column 2	inquire 975-6, 978, 1027, 1529	inquire 220, 975-6, 978, 1027, 1529
+	1806	col. 3, below line 14		spit 1604
	1811	one third down column 3	wonder 170, 600, 871, 882, 958	wonder 170, 220, 600, 871, 882, 958

Finally, this is as good a place as any to state a general warning that a few lists of lexical items that are claimed not to have some property are longer than they should have been — they get shorter each time we look at a larger corpus. One example is the list of strictly transitive verbs, those take a truly obligatory object (see section (b), Selective obligatoriness, on page 246). We include use; but in connection with illegal drugs an objectless use has developed (Amy is using again). It looks as if very few verbs indeed have truly obligatory objects, especially if one considers non-finite uses of the verbs.

Another example is the list of monosyllabic adjectives that do not inflect for comparison (see page 1583, [9]). Inflected forms of the adjectives we list there (cross, fake, ill, like, loath, prime, real, right, and worth) are certainly very rare; but crosser definitely occurs (and was more frequent in British writing about a century ago); faker and iller and realer can occasionally be found; and so on. *Worther and *worthest certainly do not appear to exist at all; but in general, monosyllabic adjectives that truly never take comparative or superlative inflectional forms are really very scarce indeed; we only list ten, and even that is a few too many. We should probably have just listed worth, loath, and perhaps prime.